A few days ago the Iranian propaganda outlet Press TV used this spoof image (created by the brilliantly satirical website People's Cube) ...

...to prove that reports of 40 Iranian Jews emigrating to Israel were "lies spread by the Zionist hegemony."

From Press TV's article "Iranian Jews reject emigration report"

The Iranian Jewish community has dismissed fraudulent reports claiming the organized secret emigration of 40 Iranian Jews to Israel.

In a Wednesday statement the Jewish community denounced reports by foreign news outlets on the mass emigration of Iranian Jews describing it as a misinformation campaign.

“Considering the Jewish community's comfortable living conditions in Iran and its deep common cultural roots with the followers of other religions in the country, Iranian Jews would never consider organized emigration,” the statement declared.

Moris Motamed, the representative of the Jewish community in the Iranian Parliament and Siamak Mare-Sedq, the chairman of Tehran's Jews Assembly said propaganda campaigns against Iran would never manipulate the Jewish community.

Two days later, PressTV realized that they were caught propagandizing, lying and manipulating the Jewish community. They replaced the image with something less absurd. The People's Cube, wise to the ways of propagandists, expected them to do that and made a screen capture of the photo and article "for historical purposes."

From the Peoples Cube open letter to the Islamic Republic of Iran

Dear Iranian Mullahs! While our satirical website and your Propaganda Directorate deal in the same trade of making up facts and exaggerating reality, we are different in that we can recognize a spoof - but you apparently can't. On Dec. 27, 2007 you used our spoof image on your propaganda website to illustrate a "true" statement that Jews are welcome in Iran and that Western reports about mass emigration of Iranian Jews are "lies spread by the Zionist hegemony."

The spoof image in question first appeared in 2005, in our parody called Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End, which revealed the absurdity of demands to dismantle Israel, with various nations, including Iran and Germany, celebrating the return of their long-missed Jews.

It gets better. Our Iranian friends tell us that the original Farsi-language placard says "Nuclear power is our absolute right," which means that you, dear Mullahs, used that image as a propaganda tool to advance your nuclear program - so you could threaten and maybe even annihilate the Jews in Israel. In our spoof, we changed the message of the placard to the complete opposite, making it appear improbable. To be fair, your story about Iran's love for the Jews was just as improbable, so it would seem only logical to put them together. It would, we repeat - if your goal were to publish a self-parody. That wasn't your intention, however. You only did it because you didn't know better.

Let's call it self-inflicted poetic justice.

The People's Cube wonders why the Mullahs and their supporters didn't get the joke. Could it be because Khomeini outlawed humor?

Expect a heartfelt article from the Daily Mail describing the heartbreak and humiliation suffered by Iran's propagandists.

But seriously, we have to wonder, why does the news of Iranian Jews emigrating to Israel provoke such an hysterical reaction?

From Pajamas Media

Why is it that Pakistan’s extremists (who purportedly hate Musharraf and democracy) are not consistent in targeting pro-Musharraf and pro-democracy people? Why do they pick and choose?

I think the answer is apparent: in Pakistan, if you do not criticize the Islamists, you will not be targeted. Musharraf and Bhutto did criticize the Islamists and that is why they tend to end up in the jihadi cross-hairs. Nawaz Sharif, on the other hand, has long pandered to Jamat e Islami (and in the early 90’s even Bin Laden), while Mullah Diesel heads the main pro-Taliban party. There is no reason for extremists to attack these people; they are already on the same side.

The fact is that Musharraf has choked Pakistan’s political process for nearly a decade now, which has contributed significantly to the expansion of extremism.

To top it all off, the U.S. has absolutely no leverage in Pakistan...

...The second, more realistic solution is for the U.S. to openly dump Musharraf and pull itself out of any semblance of involvement in Pakistan’s internal political affairs. The U.S. needs to be in a position where it has not been in a long time with Pakistan: objective...

more realistic solution is for the U.S. to openly dump Musharraf and pull itself out of any semblance of involvement in Pakistan’s internal political affairs. The U.S. needs to be in a position where it has not been in a long time with Pakistan: objective.

As Mansoor Ijaz suggests at the National Review, the U.S. should call for Musharraf to set up an independent international investigation surrounding the killing of Ms. Bhutto.

An independent panel will likely conclude that it was the terrorists that killed Ms. Bhutto and not any elements associated with Musharraf himself.

I agree that an international investigation would be a good idea, but I don't agree that the US has "absolutely no leverage in Pakistan" or that the US should "openly dump Musharraf and pull itself out of any semblance of involvement in Pakistan’s internal political affairs"

First, we do have leverage in Pakistan; second, removing our influence from Pakistan's internal political affairs would put the world in more danger, not less, since we are, as reported here in the New York Times, "secretly" aiding Pakistan in guarding their nuclear arms.

The term "secretly guarding" as used in the New York Times is, of course, a relative term. If Ali meant the the US should "'openly' remove itself from Pakistan's affairs" in the same way, this could be a good idea.

Congress has some serious doubts about selling highly advanced military technology to our good friends in Saudi Arabia, the acknowledged hub of world terrorism...

Maybe they can guess where this is heading..

[cross-posted at Solomonia]

The Washington Post

PAKISTAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S. MAHMUD ALI DURRANI: Good morning, everybody.

We are extremely sorry that Benazir Bhutto, one of our great political leaders, has been assassinated. And it happened immediately after she was addressing a public rally in Rawalpindi, a city that I live in, and in Liaquat Bagh, which is about a mile away from where I live.

I have seen her address a rally there many, many years back. And we are very sorry, and this is a time of mourning for Pakistan. And I think the government of Pakistan has already announced a three-day mourning.

I spoke to the president of Pakistan this morning before he went into his meeting, and he also expressed his shock and condemnation. And he says we strongly condemn this terrorist attack.

This has been done by terrorists, and this should firm up Pakistan's resolve to fight extremism and terrorism. And we will, God willing, keep democracy going in Pakistan.

At a minimum, Pakistan’s low-level civil war will go on. The Taliban and al-Qaeda seem lately to be giving less attention to Afghanistan and more attention to Pakistan itself. They would like to sow chaos in Pakistan as a whole, expand their base there, and perhaps use chaos to grab hold of some nuclear material. Will the military clamp down, as it has with some success in Swat, or will the army be paralyzed by its internal divisions, and by covert sympathy for the Taliban? We just don’t know.

Pakistan remains a powder keg. Unlike Somalia, where there is no educated and modernized class, and the state has been in total collapse for years, Pakistan embodies all the strengths, and all the weaknesses of modern Muslim social life. That is Pakistan’s tragedy, and our problem.

— Stanley Kurtz is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center

Britain does it:

Spies from Britain's MI6 are thought to have held at least six meetings with key Taliban figures in order to negotiate a peace deal in Afghanistan's south-eastern Helmand province.

The revelations are an embarrassment to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who just a fortnight ago denied in the British Parliament any such talks were taking place...

Britain negotiated an earlier peace deal in October 2006, which failed. At that time British forces pulled out of Musa Qala after an agreement with tribal elders declared the area a neutral zone.

Taliban fighters responded quickly by seizing control of the surrounding district and occupying the town for most of 2007.

The Afghan Government, NATO allies and Australia are believed to have all privately chided Downing Street over the Musa Qala peace deal, labelling it a surrender to the Taliban.

A former aide admitted that terrorist and Nobel prizewinner Arafat founded Black September

Ma'an (Arabic) reports that a series of articles being authored by longtime Arafat aide Marwan Kanafani in Egypt's Al Ahram will say that it was Yasir Arafat himself who created the Black September organization in 1970.

Black September was behind many of the highest-profile terror attacks in the early 1970s, including the murder of Jordanian Prime Minister Wasfi Tel, the Munich Olympic massacre, the May 1972 hijacking of a Belgian airliner from Vienna, dozens of letter bombs including at one that killed an Israeli politician in London, and the murder of two US diplomats in Khartoum.

The PLO always used Black September for plausible deniability, claiming that the deadliest BSO attacks had nothing to do with them...

...And we know that the current Palestinian Arab President Mahmoud Abbas was also involved in Black September, specifically in the Munich massacre.

Diplomats like Rice and Brown don't want to admit that they're surrendering to terrorists, but that's exactly what they're doing.

[cross-posted at Solomonia]

Chief scientist in sports cars warning to women

Sir David, who is due to retire as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser at the end of the year, said individuals needed to change their behaviour.

"I was asked at a lecture by a young woman about what she could do and I told her to stop admiring young men in Ferraris," he said.

"What I was saying is that you have got to admire people who are conserving energy and not those wilfully using it."

Fausta links to this story, saying:

The chief scientist might also want to warn men who like women in fast cars, too, lest he be accused of sexism. But, after all, if the chief scientist is a purist..

There's also this Jetsons-style Aptera car.

I think I'll make another offer to test drive.

[cross-posted at Solomonia]

This relationship blog has one take on the issue...

UNICEF has another. Their picture of the year

Captioned: The image hardly fits our idea of the happy couple's wedding picture - but this haunting photograph taken in Afghanistan graphically captures life for millions of girls given in marriage while under age.

It's true that UNICEF is doing a good thing here, highlighting this picture because they want to bring attention to this problem.

But it's also true that underage marriage is common in Iran, Saudi Arabia and in other, relatively wealthy oil-rich states. There's also the fact that underage marriage is also practiced in Sudan and Mauritania, where Islam-sanctioned slavery is encouraged.

So why are they specifically highlighting Afghanistan? I'd guess because it proves their standard claim that war (involving America) and poverty are the cause of all evils.

It also confirms their belief that quiet, peaceful advocacy for children's rights, based on "respect for the dignity and worth of each individual, regardless of race, colour, gender, language, religion, opinions, origins, wealth, birth status or ability" will stop Islamist bullies like the 'husband' pictured here from raping and enslaving children.

It isn't and it won't.

[cross-posted on Solomonia]

In Hudson County, NJ we have a lot of overzealous meter maids. Sometimes they're a little too overzealous:

Parking Authority employee Susan Wojtkowski pleaded not guilty in Central Judicial Processing court today to a charge of obstructing a governmental function. The matter was referred back to Bayonne Municipal Court with a court date of Jan. 8.

Police said that on Dec. 7, Wojtkowski stood in front of an unmarked police car and prevented two plainclothes detectives, who had already identified themselves, from pursuing a drug suspect until she could affix a ticket to their windshield.

At Winds of Change, Armed Liberal calls Jonah Goldberg's new book jaw-dropppingly stupid.

I haven't read the book, but I already have problems with the title: "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning"

Liberal is not synonymous with left. Classic Liberals, like the people who founded the country and wrote the constitution, support a free market, equal opportunity and the separation of church and state.

The Left believes that the state should enforce equality through collective interests. They're opposed to individualism and an insufficiently regulated free market.

And what does Mussolini have to do with the history of the American Left?

If the title is that problematic, I'd worry about the rest of the text.

[cross posted at Solomonia]

Via the New York Times:

Jeb Corliss wants to fly — not the way the Wright brothers wanted to fly, but the way we do in our dreams. He wants to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute...

The landing, as one might expect, poses the biggest challenge, and each group has a different approach. Most will speak in only the vaguest terms out of fear that someone will steal their plans...

..Mr. Corliss will wear nothing more than a wing suit, an invention that, aeronautically speaking, is more flying squirrel than bird or plane.

He plans to land on a specially designed runway of his own design. It will borrow from the principles of Nordic ski jumping and will cost about $2 million, which explains why he is so much more vocal than the others about his quest...

..Mr. Corliss said he could land safely at about 120 m.p.h. To protect his neck, he said, he will attach his helmet to a rigid-framed exoskeleton with the wing suit...

.."Everybody wants to be the first one to do it,"..

Which leads to an obvious and inevitable question: Why?

"Because everybody thinks that it’s not possible," Mr. Corliss said. “The point is to show people anything can be done. If you want to do amazing things, then you have to take amazing risks."

Like a novel, a flight needs to have a good, well-planned ending.

Diana West interviews Patrick Buchanan author of "Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart"

I know Pat's overblown hubris, ideology and greed are responsible for some of our problems, but I don't think he needs to take all of the blame.

I'm remodeling the house, and I had to buy a couple of IKEA bookcases. They come in huge boxes and I don't have a truck to take them home. So, I bring them home in my Cabrio with the top down.

This is a good solution in the summer (as long as it doesn't rain) but it doesn't work out so well in the winter. Today was warmer than usual (high of 41), and I had to pick up some stuff, so I thought I'd try bringing home a few bookcases.

After driving home in winds that felt like the breeze off Lake Michigan in wintry Chicago, I'd have to say that driving on the turnpike with the top down in December is not a good idea.

Having a glass of wine when you get home isn't a good idea either. Sleeepy...

Sorry to miss this..

...and Facebook?

Norman Finklestein cries himself a river..

At 54, Norman Finkelstein is pretty much back where he started. This summer, the leftist scholar—who made a name for himself in 2000 with his book The Holocaust Industry, in which he called Jewish leaders a "repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters" intent on extorting war reparations from European governments—lost his job as assistant professor of political science at DePaul University. Fortunately, he kept the lease on his late father’s threadbare rent-stabilized apartment, on Ocean Parkway, and there he’s retreated.

"It's like death," Finkelstein says. "You keep saying you’re going to die, but you never really come to grips with it. And I can see I’m not going to get another job. I haven’t yet fully absorbed it."

His days are now spent in solitary scholarly pursuits; his bookshelves buckle under the weight of tomes by Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. Notes of support from his students sit on a piano; there’s a photo of him and Noam Chomsky ("my closest friend") bare-chested on the beach at Cape Cod.

He was a Maoist revolutionary in his youth. By his own account, his academic career was bedeviled from the start by his politics: It took him thirteen years to wrest his doctorate from Princeton, since no faculty member would agree to advise him on his thesis, an analysis of Zionism. When he finally did earn the degree, none would write him a recommendation. He went on to take a series of adjunct posts—at Brooklyn College, Hunter, and NYU—rarely earning more than $20,000 a year.

At DePaul, where he arrived six years ago, his situation improved. But the success of The Holocaust Industry, which was translated into over two dozen languages and was a best seller in Germany, raised his profile, and the critics mobilized. Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz waged a fierce campaign against him, preparing a dossier of Finkelstein’s "clearest and most egregious instances of dishonesty." Still, his department, and the college, recommended him for tenure. But the university’s promotion-and-tenure board voted 4-3 against him, and DePaul's president refused to overturn the decision.

Maybe he could start up a 'scared straight' program for young Chomsky-wannabes, letting them know that their career path will lead to jack squat and a steady diet of government cheese. Manufacturing Consent is the gateway drug, a Marxist doobie. Next comes hard Marxism, anti-globalism, anti-Zionism and living in a van down by the river!

SNL - Chris Farley - Matt Foley Motivational Speaker

In NOW Lebanon, Lee Smith wrote:

No deal: The US and Syria aren’t making up. But will Lebanon ever believe it?

Hariri and the rest seem now to have given in. As March 14 figures were picked off one by one, their Washington ally, the world’s lone superpower, did nothing to check the violence. Walid Jumblatt came to town a few weeks after Hariri and half-jokingly remarked that the way to break the two-and-a-half-year siege of Lebanon would be to send car bombs to Damascus. It was not a bad idea given that Israel bombed what has been described as a Syrian nuclear site, and for all of Damascus’s bluster, they dare not confront Israel except through terrorist proxies. In other words, this is an easily deterrable enemy.

But the United States did nothing about Bashar al-Assad, except complain about Syrian interference in Lebanon – American bluster that served only to illuminate Washington’s unwillingness to back up its semi-tough talk with action. So, between recent events and the history of US-Lebanon relations in the 1990s, when President George H.W. Bush handed Lebanon off to Hafez al-Assad, it is easy to see how, from the Lebanese perspective, the impending invitation of Syria to Annapolis was the last straw. March 14 read this as a preface to an American deal with Damascus. But it is not.

As Rice’s ludicrous comparisons between Mahmoud Abbas and Martin Luther King, Jr. indicate, she wants to etch her name in history and this is way she sees most likely – finally, peace achieved in the Middle East thanks to her heroic, transformational diplomacy. But standard diplomacy means that you must grasp fully the concerns of your allies, which in the case of Lebanon, Rice failed miserably. She thus signaled to March 14 where she believes America’s real priorities lie – not with protecting a fledgling democracy in Beirut from the terrorist state next door, but in trying to reward a society that too often breeds terrorism within its own borders. So, she invited Syria.

Profoundly written..thorough...and superb... this entirely explains why I am a Aounist......and the same reason why March 14 has seen the knife in their collective backs. America always lets her allies down..also gives mixed signals, which is why we have the problems we do in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon etc. From propping up dictators in Panama ..to doing the same in Pakistan.... it is little wonder a majority of Christians in Lebanon have flocked to Aoun as their leader.. As pathetic as his alliance with the Hezbo's is...what other choice do they have? Disarm Hizbo? Let those who want them disarmed..do the disarming. Christians already tried the civil war route...and have lost almost everything. Christian marginalization will continue unabetted....especially now with the impending election of this bafoon named Sulieman. If you are gonna give us a Syrian lacky...give us Aoun...at least he knows the backstabbing hardball politics of the world.

..and didn't we all just see this coming...?

BEIRUT (AFP) — A top Lebanese army officer and his bodyguard were killed on Wednesday in a powerful car bomb that further destabilised the country as it grapples with a presidential vacuum.

A military spokesman told AFP that Brigadier General Francois El-Hajj, head of army operations, and his bodyguard were killed in the blast as their car drove through the suburb of Baabda, where the presidential palace and several embassies are located.

As they are in the Middle East.

Jeanne Assam

Via Instapundit:

The "security guard" who stopped the shooter, [Jeanne Assam] was actually a volunteer parishioner who used her own gun, not a rent-a-cop. Much more from David Hardy, who notes that press coverage tends to obscure this point..

Bourbonnais, who was among those shot by a gunman Sunday at New Life Church, watched as a security guard, a woman later identified as Jeanne Assam, calmly returned fire and killed the shooter.

"She just started walking toward the gunman firing the whole way," said Bourbonnais, who was shot in the arm. "She was just yelling 'Surrender,' walking and shooting the whole time."

Bourbonnais, 59, had just finished up a hamburger in the cafeteria on the sprawling church campus when he heard gunfire, he recalled.

He headed in the direction of the shots as frightened people ran past him looking to escape to safety.

"Where's the shooter? Where's the shooter?" Bourbonnais kept yelling, he recalled. Near an entryway in the church, Bourbonnais came upon the gunman and an armed male church security guard who was there with his gun drawn but not firing, he said.

Bourbonnais said he pleaded with the armed guard to give him his weapon.

"Give me your handgun. I've been in combat, and I'm going to take this guy out," Bourbonnais recalled telling the guard. "He kept yelling, 'Get behind me! Get behind me!' He wouldn't hand me his weapon, but he wouldn't do anything."

There was an additional armed security guard there, another man, who also didn't fire, Bourbonnais said.

Bourbonnais yelled at the gunman to draw his attention, he said.

"First, I called him 'Coward' then I called him 'S---head' " Bourbonnais said. "I probably shouldn't have been saying that in church."...

* Link thanks to Fausta, from her post Jeanne Assam and the case for CCL

Thanks to Fausta and Maria, a complete list of things caused by global warming

Michael Totten reports from Iraq's City of Mosques, Fallujah

"How do you feel about the people who live here?" I said.

"My opinion of the people here has changed, too," he said. "Originally, because of the shape the city was in, I didn't have a whole lot of respect for the people. But now, after seeing how much these people have changed, and understanding that they were under a dictatorship...I didn't really understand what a dictatorship was. These people are working hard. They have good family values. Their religious faith is incredible compared to how people are in the States. Even people who think they're religious in the States, they're nothing compared to the people here. They have city-wide prayers every day, you know? Honestly, I have a lot of respect for the people here."

I hear criticism of Iraqis of some kind almost every day when I'm in Iraq. There is a lot to criticize. Iraq is a broken country. Its infrastructure and economy are shot, its political culture dysfunctional. In my experience, though, contempt for Iraqi culture specifically, and Arabs and Islam more generally, is far more prevalent in the American civilian population, even in liberal coastal cities, than it is among American soldiers and Marines who interact with Iraqis every day, forge sometimes intense personal bonds with Iraqis, eat Iraqi food, and speak at least a little Arabic. Stereotypes about racist and psychotic Marines, as well as fanatical and psychotic Iraqis, can't survive a lengthy trip to Fallujah, at least not to the Fallujah of late 2007...

..Some of the insurgents reportedly came from places as far from Iraq as Chechnya. They weren't all Iraqis, and they weren't even all Sunni Arabs. In Ramadi around 90 percent of captured insurgents are Iraqis, but around 90 percent of suicide bombers and Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders are from another country. Fallujah, though, is not the same place as Ramadi. It has been meaner and murkier for the duration of the conflict.

"Do you think most of these guys were from here, or from somewhere else?" I said.

"I don't think they were from here," he said. "I know how these people are and how their culture is. I honestly don't think they would fight anywhere close to their families or anything that they care about, just on the chance that somebody would get hurt. Just like back in the States. If you wanted to fight, you wouldn't start a war in your house. You would want to go somewhere else."

So, we're encouraging the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, the Hub of World terror.

We're doing this despite the fact that Saudis financed 9/11, despite the fact that the Saudis finance Hamas, despite the fact that al Qaeda is the KSA's unofficial paramilitary force. Despite all of this, our government values our 'friendship' with the extremist Wahhabis.

This friendship is not just about oil. The Sauds proved their worth to the British (and gained control of Mecca and Medina) before oil was even discovered by 'keeping order' in the Middle East. Basically, Ibn Saud and his ilk 'kept order' by stirring up trouble, then got credit for helping the Brits put it down.

They're doing the same thing now. Our alliance with Saudi Arabia isn't a moderating force in the Middle East, it's actually causing most of our problems in the region. After we invaded Iraq at the urging of our Saudi allies, the same Saudi allies sent an army of car bombers into Iraq to destabilize the country and to kill American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Saudi Arabia also supports Hamas - while telling us that they're essential to the Israeli/Palestinian "peace process"

The Sauds are currently inciting Shi'ite anger in the region by regularly denouncing Shi'ites as infidels, destroying the holy places of Mecca, persecuting the Shi'ites in their country, (the Saudi woman who is going to receive 200 lashes for the 'crime' of being gang-raped is Shi'ite), and using their car bombers to attack Shi'ites in Iraq.

Then they do what they always do. They run behind our skirts and say "mommy, he's picking on me".

We're going to fall for this routine again??

In Opinion Journal, Max Boot says:

We need to tell the Gulf Arabs that if they expect the U.S. to stand with them in the future, they need to stand with us publicly, not just privately. At the very least they need to stop kicking us in the shins, as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia did earlier this year by condemning as "illegitimate" the "foreign occupation" of Iraq (even though he doesn't want us to leave).

We have no influence with our Saudi Allies because we continue to reward them for their support of terrorism. In Arab culture (as in most cultures) rewarding provocative behavior is a sign of weakness. They're not going to "stand with us", they're not going to fight Iran and they're not going to stop trying to destroy Israel.

The money we 'earn' from these sales will barely cover the costs of the damage inflicted on Iraq and on our soldiers by Saudi suicide bombers. It's doesn't come close to paying back the money we owe to China and Japan for the costs of financing the war in Iraq.

This arms sale, like every other action our government takes towards these 'allies' legitimizes their extremism and encourages more Saudi-funded terrorism. It also proves to the world that we're the most gullible nation on the planet.

..a perfect recovery

Large storm swells reached Morro Bay California on December 4, 2007, bringing 15-20 foot swells with some plus sets. A U.S. Coast Guard 47-foot Motor Life Boat was out for practice maneuvers in the large surf, which is not unusual. However, a large wave hit that was probably more than they bargained for...

Intense sequence by photographer Gary Robertshaw

In a discussion about Ali Eteraz's post on the Canadian Islamic Congress' lawsuit against Mark Steyn:

Mark Steyn epublished an excerpt of his book, American Alone, in Macleans Magazine Canada, the called it "flagrantly Islamophobic" and asked for "equal space" for rebuttal. When denied it, they took the magazine before the Human Rights Commission.

I write about all this at Guardian. The article is entitled, Their Own Worst Enemy: "When Muslim groups try to silence the press, they live up to the most negative prejudices about Islam."

the more I read about this fantastic crap, the more I'm convinced that religion is the original poisoner of all humankind.

Your religion. Their religion. My religion. Anybody's religion.

Fantastic. Unreasoning. Unreasonable. Murderous. Hate-inducing. You name it.

I pity the world and its inhabitants in the coming of the next Age of Belief.

The unfettered human mind has known greatness.

Now it is being systematically poisoned once again.

But religion combined with politics does 'fetter' the mind. A brutal, authoritarian secular regime is still capable of advancing, of developing new technologies that benefit everyone. A theocracy is not. They do the opposite.

History proves that theocracies enforce ignorance and destroy accumulated knowledge. They use this enforced ignorance to keep power, and it works fairly well for them. History also proves that imperialistic theocracies are much more tenacious than secular autocracies.

I don't agree with everything Steyn writes, but we really do need to listen to all warnings. When people get lost in the mire of faith-based politics it's hard to get unstuck.

There might be a very good reason for that...

A second Temple House adjacent to Temple Mount. Via Israel National News*

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Wednesday afternoon the discovery of a large-sized house from the Second Temple Period several dozen meters south of the Temple Mount. The remains were excavated in the well-known Givati Parking Lot, just outside the entrance to the Western Wall.

Writings of the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius (Joseph son of Matityahu) indicate that the uncovered building may well have belonged to the family of Queen Helene, who converted to Judaism in the 1st Century BCE. However, excavation chief Dr. Doron Ben-Ami said that this may or may not be true, "and we can only hope that we will discover more findings that will help us identify this building with certainty."

This is not the best way to cope with the mind-numbing stretch between winter and spring break ..

The lurid tale began on March 21, 2002, when Darwin paddled his red kayak into the North Sea in front of his seafront home in Seaton Carew, near Hartlepool. He never returned. An oar drifted ashore the next day, and after a fruitless search, the shattered remains of his vessel were found on a local beach six weeks later. Despite this evidence, suspicion lingered that there was something incongruous about an experienced kayaker drowning on a day when the sea was, in the words of one member of the rescue effort, "smooth as a millpond." Even before it emerged that the Darwins had reunited in Panama, his aunt, Margaret Burns, 80, told the Evening Standard newspaper, "To be honest I don't believe he ever got wet."

The most cogent comment I've heard, thanks to Ben L.:

It's a signal. First, they are obviously producing weapons grade uranium, which is a major component of a weapons program. Saying it's not is silly. It would be like saying someone purchased a Christmas tree and four rolls of wrapping paper, but other than that there are no signs that someone plans to celebrate Christmas. Second, when at least some intel obviously exists, REAL intelligence estimates always either take a pessimistic or vague view. Analysts would write "We have no indicators or reliable data on Iran's current nuclear weapons program". They would NEVER in these circumstances say there is no program- only that we lack data. NO ONE would simply declare a major p[iece] of the puzzle to be irrelevant.

That being said, why then would they say it? It's a signal. It's like, when you're in the wilderness and you come across a bear and the bear looks away. It's not that the bear doesn't see you. It knows exactly where you are. It is pretending not to see you, giving you a signal that says "I'm acting like I don't see you so you can leave and we don't have to fight."

This signal most likely says "Iraq is finally calming down. And your reward for not escalating matters is that we will look away for a while and pretend not to see you, so we don't have to fight."

..an opinion that's shared, to some degree, by others.

Solomonia links to this video (and transcript), saying:

Haven't you ever wanted to go into the past with a video camera to witness and film the past? That's what this is like — the Dark Ages with production values. Every American should watch this. This is what the culture war is about, and why we need to be concerned with immigration and institutions telling us we need to "respect the other" without major conditions attached...

...There is much more, including one outnumbered man arguing for free will. He's outnumbered. We can only wish him luck.

There's no need to go back in time to see the dark ages. They're here.

Area reporters + TSA incompetence...

[Link thanks to Omri]

Breaking news from Little Green Footballs:

One type of troll we see all the time at LGF is known as a "moby," after the pop star Moby—who publicly advocated posting "false flag" comments at right wing web sites, posing as extremist nut jobs, in order to discredit those sites.

But this deceptive practice can actually be dangerous for the moby. In Milwaukee, a teacher pretending to be a whacked-out teacher-hater at a conservative blog was not only caught and suspended from his job, but arrested.

West Bend - As readers of a conservative blog debated the subject of teacher salaries, a writer using the pseudonym "Observer" weighed in.

The West Bend teachers' salaries made him sick, the person wrote, adding that the 1999 Columbine High School killers had the right idea.

"They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time! Too bad the liberls (sic) rip them; they were heros (sic) and should be remembered that way," the writer said.

But police say the writer was a teacher himself - and the past president of a teachers union - apparently posing as a teacher-hater.

James Buss was arrested Thursday by West Bend police, and the 46-year-old Cudahy man could face criminal charges. He has been suspended from his job as a teacher at Oak Creek High School.

Buss, a former president of the Oak Creek School District's teachers union, is on an indefinite leave of absence from the school pending further investigation, district Superintendent Sara Larsen said. He teaches chemistry and has been employed at the school since 1994.

Buss didn't return phone calls to his home.

But Owen Robinson, a West Bend resident and administrator of bootsandsabers.com - a collection of news and conservative commentary where the message was posted at 6:50 p.m. Nov. 16 - said Friday that it seemed that "Observer" was "posing as a conservative, right-wing whack job to discredit" the Web site's discussion of teachers' salaries.

Via the Moscow Times:

Voters complained of intimidation and attempted bribery in what election observers called a coordinated effort to boost United Russia's results in the State Duma vote on Sunday.

Golos, the only independent Russian monitoring group, said it received more than 3,500 calls on its complaints hotline.

"We know for certain that this is just a drop in the ocean," said Grigory Melkonyants, Golos' deputy head. "We are seeing serious violations that we are afraid will just be ignored."

He said the fact that similar violations were being reported around the country suggested that orders had come from the authorities.

Opposition parties said they had recorded dozens of violations, and a popular LiveJournal elections blog carried reports of violations as well.

Six Apart, has sold the LiveJournal blogging platform to Russian media company, SUP. Although SUP is based in Russia, LiveJournal development will remain in San Francisco with the majority of the LiveJournal team at Six Apart staying on board....

Will LiveJournal users fare better under Russian control? As you would expect of LiveJournal users conspiracy theories and backlash are currently raging across the site, but at least in the short term, most of these concerns seem misplaced.

Ask Trotsky. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

From Shrinkwrapped

The important point from my work is that rage avoided is rage that can only grow; rage that is confronted and dealt with can be understood, channeled, and contained.

We do neither the Muslim world nor the West any favors by behaving as if their rage is so terrifying that we must avoid it at all costs. If we do not vocally address and confront the rage and its derivatives, we will one day, once again be forced to confront its violent fruition.

..more

View from the cable car window, going down

Michael Oren notes that the Annapolis peace process appears to be all about Iran: Peace Through Anxiety

LAST week’s multi-national summit meeting here was about many things, the least of which, perhaps, was the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Behind the calls for the creation of a Palestinian state that would live serenely and stably alongside the Jewish state, beyond the vision of a Middle East at last absolved of its longest-running conflict, was the paramount question of power — who in the region wields it and who in the region wants it. Indeed, while Annapolis is unlikely to succeed in bridging the gaps between Israeli and Arab positions, it effectively drew lines in the sand between those nations siding with America and the West and those allied with Iran.

As a rule, international conferences have never served as effective frameworks in the search for Middle Eastern peace....

... Yet, in spite of its glaring handicaps, Annapolis must be deemed a triumph — not of peacemaking, paradoxically, but of girding the region for conflict. Though no doubt sincere in their desire to neutralize the Arab-Israeli irritant in Middle Eastern affairs, participants in the conference were above all motivated by their fear of a radical and relentlessly aggressive Iran. This fear has deepened with the success of the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas in Lebanon and Gaza, as well as the expansion of Iranian influence westward into the Iraqi vacuum.

The inability of the international community either to entice or deter the Iranians from producing nuclear weapons adds urgency to the need to unite those countries threatened by those bombs. That, and not American fiat, brought 49 states and organizations to Annapolis; that, and not the yearning for an Israeli-Arab accord, impelled a Saudi prince to sit alongside an Israeli prime minister...

Not unexpectedly, the Iranians reacted ferociously to Annapolis. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pronounced it a "failure" and the government-controlled press promised to "bring down Islamic wrath" on its participants. But such rage merely betrays the anxiety induced by Annapolis in Tehran. For the first time a coalition of Western and modern Arab leaders has coalesced and declared its commitment to resist "extremism" in the Middle East — a well-known euphemism for Iran..

I hoped that the Bush administration and the state department were wising up, doing the right thing in Iran - making efforts to weaken the regime and their intelligence agents. Instead, it appears that they're doing the same dumb thing they always have, relying on our Saudi allies and their 'influence' to make everything right.

We ignore the fact that our allies are more of a threat than our enemies. We ignore the fact that our allies have been working overtime to incite Shia anger in the region, just as we ingnored their efforts to incite Saddam in Iraq, Gaddafi in Iraq, Palestinians in Israel, Islamists in Pakistan, separatists in Thailand and India, extremists in Britain and Europe...

As Bush famously said:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

..governments worldwide will use the Gulf's apparently growing economic power as another reason to continue kissing their asses. Iran will continue to exploit fears of nukes to gain status in the Muslim world, Russia will continue to appear to support their nuclear ambitions because they know how much we freak out about nukes. They know that attacking Iran will deplete the West's economies, and they know that the mess we create will benefit them. The Chinese know that too.

If we don't wise up, the west will attack Iran, we'll be bogged down in another long insurgency-filled occupation, we'll continue to borrow from the Chinese and the Saudis will be happier, richer and fatter than ever. Al Qaeda will have more money than ever, there will be more terrorist attacks worldwide and the dollar will be the new peso.

We could avoid this predicted downfall, we could decide, for once, to stop destroying ourselves and Israel for the benefit of our Saudi allies, but we won't. Our government is incapable of seeing anything outside of their old rut. Annapolis is proof of that.

Totally..

Here's an interesting test:

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

Well, maybe not. This test says the same thing. But it was logical to seek a second opinion.

* Link thanks to Dean